Bridgestone – Touring a Tire Factory

If you believe the construction and mining industry is an economic barometer, the economy's health is improving. Bridgestone is spending $900 million to construct a new factory in South Carolina for building those giant tires used on the enormous dump trucks you see in open cast mines. These giant tires cost up to $80,000 for a 63-inch diameter tire. Each tire, weighing up to 13,000 lbs, lasts for only 6,000 to 8,000 hours depending on the terrain. Bridgestone says one mine in Canada wants to keep a year's supply of 1,300 tires in stock. It's no wonder Bridgestone can justify spending so much money to build its first Off Road Radial (ORR) tire factory outside of Japan.

Before touring the construction site we had the opportunity to walk through the nearby Bridgestone tire factory that makes 25,200 regular car and light-duty truck tires up to 20-inches in diameter. It's fascinating to see raw rubber go in one end, be formed into rolls of rubber of different thicknesses and compounds before being extruded with steel wire, nylon and other components used for the plies and sidewalls. On average there are 13 different components in a tire.

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Much of the factory is automated and it is amazing to see a green tire emerge at the end of the process. Each so-called green tire is then placed in a curing machine where the tread and name on the sidewall are molded in and the rubber is vulcanized. After the tire has cooled each one is individually inspected by an automated testing machine that also checks its balance. Each tire is also inspected visually by a human.

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I was surprised to discover that tires, fitted as original equipment by auto manufacturers, are careful matched so that their conicity is matched to avoid any pull. It's something that's not possible with aftermarket tires as they are not sold as matched sets. By the end of the tour I came away with the realization that tires are far more complicated to manufacture than you might think.

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We also had an interesting demonstration that showed how the lower rolling resistance of Bridgestone's Ecopia tires helps lower fuel consumption. We free-wheeled on tricycles fitted with car tires down a ramp. Every one of us in attendance rolled a greater distance on Ecopia tires than on regular tires.